Mike Thompson: A Middle Path to Reducing Gun Violence

As a hunter and gun owner, I believe that we should protect the Second Amendment right of law-abiding individuals to own firearms. As a dad and grandfather, I also believe that we have a responsibility to make our schools, streets and communities safe. We can do both if Congress steps up. Many of the president's executive actions will help reduce gun violence, but the policies that would have the greatest impact require congressional action.

After being named chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Gun Violence Prevention Task Force last month, I held town-hall meetings in my Northern California district. Hundreds attended, and I heard from law-enforcement officials, mental-health experts, school officials, National Rifle Association members and gun-control advocates.

Many feared that their Second Amendment rights would come under attack when my task force makes its recommendations to Congress next month. Others wanted to cast those rights aside. I think both views are extreme.

I will never give up my guns and I will never ask law-abiding individuals without a history of dangerous mental illness to give up theirs. Not only am I personally against this, but the Constitution wouldn't allow it. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court affirmed once and for all that Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms.

ENLARGE

David Gothard

However, just as the First Amendment protects free speech but doesn't allow Americans to incite violence, the Second Amendment has limitations, too. As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia outlined in Heller, there is no constitutional problem with laws forbidding firearms in places such as schools or with laws prohibiting felons and the mentally ill from carrying guns.

This ruling provides people on both sides with an opportunity to work between the extremes and within the confines of the Second Amendment to pass legislation that will reduce gun violence.

There is wide agreement that we must close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it by improving early intervention and addressing the shortage of mental-health professionals.

Many people on both sides also agree that everyone who buys a firearm should go through a comprehensive background check. No one wants convicted criminals or people with a history of dangerous mental illness to have access to guns. Yet our laws allow people to buy firearms privately or at some gun shows without going through a background check, and many states remain deficient in transferring important records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers. This needs to change.

Voters also want Congress to crack down on "straw-purchasing," the process by which someone legally purchases a firearm for the purpose of transferring it to a friend who is barred from gun ownership (someone with a history of domestic abuse, for example). There should be stricter federal consequences for such unlawful transfers.

The same goes for illegal gun trafficking. Many law-enforcement officials say that illegal gun-traffickers are most often charged with mere paperwork violations. To successfully cut down on their illicit conduct, we need more agents to conduct more frequent inspections of gun stores, and we need stiffer federal penalties for those who purchase and traffic these guns.

Federal authorities also give undue attention to prosecuting prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms. Federal law bars nine categories of people—including felons and those who have been judged seriously mentally ill—from buying guns. But when ex-convicts attempt to buy guns, they are hardly ever prosecuted. Although the FBI referred more than 76,000 such cases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 2010, Justice Department attorneys prosecuted just 44 of them. Prosecuting these criminals should be a priority and Congress needs to stiffen the penalties.

There is also strong popular support for a national program modeled on California's Armed Prohibited Persons System, which requires that those convicted of certain crimes or found to have serious mental illness turn in any firearms they own. Expanding California's system nationwide would help make sure guns are kept out of the hands of those we all agree shouldn't have them.

A majority of Americans also agree (according to a Pew poll released this month) that assault magazines have no place in our society. These magazines hold more than 10 rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.

On the issue of reducing gun violence, there is a path between extremes. This debate isn't a choice between protecting the Second Amendment or reducing gun violence. It is about the willingness of a responsible majority to do both.

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